Nazrul — the Humanist

Abstract

From the day I was bom and came to be aware about personalities that my family always looked up to and respected, Tagore and Nazrul were always in the first row, the WIPs. Their photos were donned on the wall and a third competitor showed up around the late sixties. His photo also found a place in the VVIP row during 1971. He was none other than Mujib, later Bangabandhu and Father of the Nation. Why these three personalities? The answer was in their humanistic attitude with which they carried themselves all their lives. My father was a protege of the great Husain Shahid Suhrawardy and so was Bangabandhu. The mentoring of these people and the way they were nurtured and cultured spoke a thousand words. During the riot of 1964, I still remember the day when kites were flying in the Dhaka sky. It was January 14 and the people of old Dhaka flew kites on this day every year as this was “Sankaranti”. After Maghreb prayers, came the chanting “Allahu Akbar”. Houses of Hindus at Lal Mohan Street were burning and particularly the house of Pitambar Shaha. Bindu Madhab Shaha Banik was a great friend of my father and lots of6 Adda time’ was spent in this house along with other white collared colleagues of theirs. My father was the first person to come to the rescue of the Banik family. Through negotiation with the rioters, by giving the Banik family refuge in our house and later when things went sour to escort them out of danger to safer havens. The ultimate was to happen. We had to leave our house for about a month and stayed at Fuller Road and other places since my father and his family was hounded by the rioters for coming to the rescue of the Hindus. Come 1971, the same thing happened again to the Hindus. But after liberation, the Bengali speaking public wanted to take revenge against the non-Bengali families living adjacent to us in the old Dhaka city. Once again my father came to their rescue. It didn’t matter whether they were Hindus or non-Bengalis; my father did what he thought was right. The above actions emanated from one sole objective: love for living things irrespective of caste, creed, sex, race and colour and what have you. The teaching came from the same school of thought, the school that these above personalities belong to. This is the ‘School of Humanism’